Badge and Gun
by Sarah's Scrawls
Summary: The Virginian counsels a friend, but finds that his problems are much deeper than he had imagined. One-shot.


I had to give my favorite character from the Virginian some love. He's so overlooked. This one-shot was inspired by two John Mayer songs, _Badge and Gun _and _Dear Marie._ The girl I mention may be interpreted to mean whoever you want, but I was actually paying homage to the show that Clu Gulager was in before the Virginian, called _The Tall Man. _I love thinking of that show as Ryker's origin story. Anyways, I hope you enjoy!

* * *

The cramped office was quiet and still. No prisoners were using the cells, and since it was a Sunday afternoon, there was not a lot of traffic outside. Ryker sat in his chair, feet propped up on his desk, reading a newspaper. However, he really wasn't reading. His eyes were scanning the words, but his mind was far away.

Into the midst of his thoughts, the door opened and the Virginian entered.

"Wha'd'ya say?" grunted the sheriff without looking behind him.

"Ryker," nodded the Shiloh foreman. "I wanted to ask-" The sheriff lifted his hand, holding a coffee cup, and said,

"Uh, uh, you, uh, you see this, uh, this cup, in my hand? Notice that the liquid inside is, uh, well, it's still there. Now I can't talk to a man without first making sure that it's all gone." The Virginian watched with an amused smile as Ryker took several leisurely swallows from the cup, still reading his newspaper. Finally, he took one more sip, savouring the taste in his mouth, and swallowing with a satisfied sigh he folded down his newspaper.

"Alright, what's on your mind?" Raising an eyebrow, the Virginian said,

"Mrs. Billingsworth tells me that you weren't in church today. She's afraid you're up to no good." One corner of Ryker's mouth curled upwards, and he let out a rough chuckle.

"Yeah, well, she might be right, Boy." The Virginian smiled and sat on the edge of the desk, pushing Ryker's feet off in the process.

"What are you doin' in here? I didn't know you had any pressing business that would keep you in your office today." A bitter smile crossed the sheriff's face.

"Ah, you know I just love this place so much that I can't stand to leave." The Virginian laughed at the joke, but his smile dimmed and his eyes searched the face of his friend for the cause of the bitterness in his voice. "What brings you in here?" asked Ryker before the Virginian was fruitful in his search.

"I had to come into town for some supplies and just thought I'd drop in to see you." Another harsh laugh escaped the sheriff as he answered,

"See me? Boy, you, huh, you must be pretty desperate for company if you're making social calls to your sheriff." This time the Virginian did not give the laughter or the smile that he knew Ryker was hoping for. He was beginning to see some answers to his questions.

"What's eatin' you, Emmett?"

"Oh, nothin', nothin' at all, it's just, uh, it's been a long day."

"At ten in the morning?" countered the Virginian. "No, somethin's botherin' you, Emmett, and I intend to find out what it is." Ryker pursed his lips together, looked down at the ground, then jerked up from his chair, grabbing his coffee cup in the process, and walked over to the stove to refill it.

"It's, uh, it's just that, uh, a sheriff, well, that ain't the best friend in the world to have." The Virginian, starting to become exasperated by the sheriff's self-pity, donned his lecture face and replied,

"Come on, Emmett, you know I see you as more than just a sheriff. You're a friend, to me and to a whole lot of others."

"Yeah, yeah, well, you say that now, but you can't tell me that you don't feel just a little uncomfortable when you're around me, isn't that right?"

"I mean it, Ryker. I don't see you any differently than I do, say, Trampas or the Judge."

"That's a bald-faced lie and you know it," said Emmett quietly. "You can't just, be friends with a sheriff. There's always that little itch, that little reservation, waiting there in the back of your mind, prodding you and reminding you that, this isn't just anybody. Make one wrong move and this tin badge could throw you in jail. No, a man like me can't have friends. Any friends I've had have usually ended up in jail or dead, probably because I put them there." The Virginian didn't say anything after this. Ryker didn't often open up, and when he did, the Shiloh foreman knew it was best to stay silent.

"You know," continued the sheriff, "Most people think that this office was made to keep only the criminals in. They, uh, they don't think, that maybe, it keeps the sheriff in as well. Maybe, it feels like a jail to him too."

"I thought you liked it here, Emmett." Ryker let out another bitter laugh.

"Yeah, because that's what I wanted people to think. They all think they know me, and they all think I've changed so much since I first came. Sometimes I think so too, but then these times come along when my feet begin to itch for a change, for a long, free road to start riding down and not look back. Y'know, when you're a sheriff, people expect you to stay put and be respectable. You can't just, take off in the middle of the night to anywhere. In a way, being a sheriff is being in a jail. At least it feels that way sometimes." The Virginian's eyebrows had come together in a sad, understanding expression.

"I never knew you felt that way, Ryker."

"Yeah, I know," responded the sheriff harshly. "Like I said, no one does. I, uh, I guess I didn't want them to know, as long as…" he trailed off and left his sentence unfinished as he took a sudden drink from his cup. The Virginian watched him with sad eyes, and the silence hung between them heavily.

Finally, wishing to bring the conversation back to a lighter note and cheer up his melancholy friend, the Shiloh foreman commented, "Hey, I forgot, I ran into someone that said they knew you."

"Oh yeah?" answered Ryker a little absently, thoughts still on the previous topic. "Who was it?"

"It was a woman who said she used to knew you many years ago, back in your questionable days." A fond, mischievous smile played on the sheriff's face as he took another drink of his coffee.

"Yeah, boy, those were the days." He let out a chuckle. The faraway look in his eye and the crooked smile on his face showed that reminiscences had overtaken his former morbid thoughts. Coming back to the present after a few seconds, he asked, still wearing a hint of his smile, "Say, what'd you say her name was?"

"She told me her name was Rita," replied the Virginian. "She said she was sure you'd remember her. I-" He halted when he looked up at the sheriff. Ryker's face had frozen, and only his hand moved to set down his cup on the stove. The look in his eyes was so unlike anything the Virginian had seen in his friend that he stood up from his seat on the desk and asked concernedly,

"What's a matter, Emmett? Do you know her?" Emmett nodded his head slowly, still staring into the distance.

"Yeah, I, know her," he said quietly. Slowly, he walked back to his desk and sat down in his seat, still with a far-off look. The Virginian watched him with concern as he resumed his seat on the desk.

"Where did you see her?" asked the sheriff with a cough, sounding as if he had forgotten how to use his voice.

"I met her coming out of a general store down in Arizona." He paused before he continued, keeping a close watch on his friend to see how he would react. "She was carrying a lot of supplies so I helped her with some of them. As we were walking to her wagon I mentioned that I was looking for a new rifle for your birthday, you know the one I gave you? Well I mentioned your name, and she said that she knew you, back when you were a kid in Lincoln County." Ryker continued to stare at the ground as he listened to the Virginian's story.

"When we got to the wagon, she said to be sure and tell you hello. Two boys then came running out of the store, each with a handful of candy, and she said they were her sons. Fine-looking boys, grow up to be fine men some day. Then the cutest little girl came out, crying her heart out, saying that the two boys wouldn't let her have any of the candy. Their ma sure straightened them out quick." The Virginian chuckled at the remembrance, but Emmett suddenly stood up and went back to the stove, hunched forward with his hands on the railing.

The Virginian wisely held his peace for several moments, sensing Ryker's emotion. After a while, he asked quietly, "Who was she, Emmett?" A bitter grin spread over the sheriff's face, and he pushed himself back to a standing tall position, turning to face the Virginian.

"I was gonna marry her," said Emmett with a pained chuckle. "I loved her, boy, yeah, I really loved that girl." He shook his head. "I wanted to have her for the rest of my life." The Virginian looked down at the floor, unable to look his friend in the eyes. "But life just doesn't seem to work that way." Raking his hand through his hair, he let out another bitter chuckle. "Y'know, those kids of hers, they could have been mine." He placed a fist on the railing. "I always wanted to have a family." After he'd absently tapped the railing several times, he jerked around and walked to his filing cabinet and began to shuffle through the records, leaving the Virginian in contemplative silence.

Ryker's restlessness and bitterness suddenly were laid bare to his friend. With his last words, the Virginian realized what lay beneath all of the anger and the sadness. The sheriff knew that he was getting older, and that a sheriff's life was no life for a family. He had looked down the path that his life was following, and he saw that it stretched out bare and lonely. He was trapped in a job that required his entire life and left nothing else.

The next day the Virginian met Mark Abbott in the street. "Mark!" he called cheerfully. "How are you?"

"I'm fine," he replied with a smile as he grasped the foreman's hand.

"Have you seen Emmett today?" the Virginian asked.

"No, I was just heading into the office for the day."

"I think I'll come in with you," he answered, and followed the sheriff into the office. When they entered, they were met with emptiness.

"I thought Ryker would be here for sure by now," said Mark, surprised. But the Virginian was not surprised when he looked at the desk and saw a piece of paper with messy handwriting scrawled upon it.

"_A copy of your key is hanging where it used to be. Good as you've always been to me, the life I need to lead is somewhere out there calling over those hills."_


End file.
